I'll start with school. It's been madness. The kids are so squirrely... some days I swear the clock stands still. And my older ones are getting all twitterpated or something. It's grossing me out. But! Spring Break is on its way - only one more week of chaos and I'll then I'll have a chance to regain all sanity. In addition to the stress of dealing with 600+ crazies a week, the district's financial situation is causing everyone to panic just a little. The budget deficit is huge, so they started warning us before Christmas Break that many people would be cut and that most likely, everyone would be taking at least a 4% salary reduction. At our most recent meeting last week, we were informed that the outlook has improved a little and that salary reductions might be out of the picture. However, positions will still be cut. Today the letters went out and I'm counting my blessings, because my job is safe. God is definitely looking out for us! In even better news, I've been offered an after-school position for a "music readiness" program sponsored by the Richmond Symphony. It starts next fall, two days a week for two hours at a time. It's going to be a wonderful opportunity to further my career and the extra money will obviously be a huge help to us! They may even pay for me to get one level of Orff certification this summer - something I've been wanting to do since college! There's a lot of work to be done, but I'm really excited. Again, I'm so blessed!
As for Stuart's school, I'll do an update there as well. He tries to keep up his blog, but between almost daily meetings, classes, and what seems to be endless homework (and all-nighters) he doesn't get around to writing much. So I'll do my best. :) His classes and work are going really well. I continue to be amazed by his talent - I really think he has quite a career ahead of him! Right now, he's in the thick of intership "stuff". He's applied to several agencies, most in New York or Los Angeles. No official news yet, but he's getting really positive feedback on his work from several places. Oh! And a big thank you to Garrett for working the connections in CA. Really appreciated! Hopefully we'll know more soon... it's a little difficult to plan our summer when we have no idea where he'll be. :) If you haven't checked his blog lately, make sure to do that!
In other news, the weather has been absolutely beautiful here and we've been trying to take advantage. The first nice weekend, we decided to go to one of the Cold Harbor battlefields from the Civil War. They have a nice, long trail, so we took the dogs with us. The trenches were definitely the coolest part. They're everywhere and a few are still pretty decent in size. Stuart had to reenact.
I spent the last weekend doing a lot of planting... I can't wait for my container garden to get going!!! I love growing my own stuff, but I usually forget to take care of it. No green thumb, but I'll see what I can do.
Several weekends ago, we took Izzy to a pet expo. (I know, I felt bad for Hutch too, but there's no way I could have contained all 70 lbs. of him with that many people and dogs around.) Anyway, Izzy had a blast. Turns out she's a natural at agility courses (Hutch is too) and the trainers loved her! She competed in a puppy race and took (an non-awarded) 2nd place. She probably could have won - she was way ahead until she realized that there were several other puppies running, at which point she began a game of chase. Oh well. We still think she's awesome. Here's a "pre-race" photo. You can tell she's totally psyched.
Hutch turned 2 on Valentine's Day. We celebrated with a nice dinner and cake for the whole gang. If you click on the picture to zoom, you can see that Hutch is licking his lips.
And the bestest of all... the Russell girls came to visit!!! We were so lucky to have Erika and her beautiful girls stay for a few days. We soaked up Audrey and Claire time and enjoyed visiting with Erika so much! Her dogs came along, so Hutch and Izzy were ecstatic. Audrey and I baked cookies, made up games to play, and read LOTS of books!!! She'll be on a 3rd grade reading level when she enrolls in Kindergarten if she keeps up this pace! :) Claire is an incredibly happy baby and we loved talking to her and making her smile. We also took a trip to a park and the children's museum and had a blast! Overall, the visit was wonderful and we were sad to watch them leave. But fortunately, they're relatively close so I'm sure we'll see them again soon. Maybe we'll even get to visit with that elusive pilot! :)
Well, I think that concludes this massive post. I've really been missing everyone lately and I hope all of you are doing well. Now that the blog is finally updated, maybe we can get caught up on Skyping!
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